1. The Imperative for Globally Inclusive Scholarly Communication Focus on Ghana

2. Introduction: why it is important What do we mean by globally inclusive scholarly communication? Information is a public good! ●Equity ●Fairness Platforms for sharing data: ●Institutional Repositories (https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/) ●Subject Repositories (http://www.gbif.org/) ●Repositories of Repositories (http://roar.eprints.org/)

3. The Access Principle (Willinsky, 2006): ‘‘In Africa, there is no less of a struggle underway to support the development of research capacities amid scarce access to the scholarly literature’’ (p. 99) One librarian at the Development Policy Centre in Ibadan, Nigeria, was unable to get ‘‘more than 60 percent of the issues published each year of the print journals to which the library subscribes’’ (pp. 99–100).

4. International Initiatives Free online access helps, (see Research4Life and INASP) but slow network problems pose barriers to access. Many African scholarly journals face continuous economic struggles and are not indexed, though that is changing.

5. Open Access (BOAI): Quality output; fast dissemination; protect the author. Open access is the: ‘free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited’ (Budapest Open Access Initiative 2013). Funders should cover reasonable publications costs Institutions should require deposit into the repository for immediate dissemination (upon acceptance, not publication) Metrics should reflect the article, not the publication See recommendations here: http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10- recommendations.http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10- recommendations

6. Impediments to Access in Developing Nations High Internet cost Unreliable electricity Govt just announced an end to this problem. Some are skeptical…... Lack of funding for major IT projects Digital divide older folks less technology savvy than younger ones Age of exposure to ICT affects adoption of it. Cottrell, R. Les. 2013. “How Bad Is Africa’s Internet.” IEEE Spectrum, January 29. http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/how-bad-is- africas-internet.

8. Undersea cables (Current and planned) Source: https://manypossibilities.net/african- undersea-cables/

9. ...and in Ghana Negatives: ¾ of the population accesses internet from an internet cafe (WorldBank report, 2016); offices often lack a stable Internet connection. Cyber security is poor, leading to internet scams (Ghanaian Times, 2015) Positives: Excellent potential for R&D To support the “GHANA VISION 2020”, a policy framework aimed at transforming from its current status to a higher middle income country. With 4 major universities( size of Mizzou) and multiple Private ones, research activity is seeing an increasing pace. image: http://www.csir.org.gh/

10. Our study Quant/qual assessment of attitudes of scientists and librarians to create a blueprint for successful institutions repository development in Ghana Demographic information: age; education Databases, IR; who should manage it; impediments; funding IT: comfort level, users of -, internet connection speed, providers, disruptions; how to solve problems IRs in four main scientific research institutes in Ghana Animal Research Institute Water Research Institute Ghana Atomic Energy Commission Food Research Institute image: http://gaecgh.org/

11. Findings Beliefs and purposes Repositories should contain a wide variety of electronic resources: peer reviewed articles, other articles, books, images, datasets, software Management of the IR is crucial for maintaining quality Problems with IRs: More funding is needed for ICT projects (more on this in qualitative findings) 14/31 researchers connect to the Internet with a modem; 7/10 librarians connect with cable; low bandwidth is problematic. Intellectual Property rights violations are a concern Similarly, trust in using the IR concerning theft, preservation

12. Qualitative findings: ICT and Access “Though there are limited funds in the institute, more funds need to be allocated to solve ICT problems. Also, proposals could be sent to foreign donors for assistance in the form of free subscription and access to relevant materials, to have some form of concessions where it may not be possible to acquire services for free and many others.’’ ‘‘...in Ghana in general, I have the opinion that the cost of the Internet is too high and the bandwidth is low. Furthermore, reliability is low. It will help a lot of the government can put in place policy to regulate ICT providers in Ghana, especially ISPs and communication companies. In regards to regulation, I mean the quality of service, the price of service and the reach of communication services.’’ ‘‘The service provider was maintained but the service was switched from DSL to cable (fiber optics). There was a slight interruption in the switch, which did not affect work that much. However, the quality of the service was supposed to improve, but it has rather worsened—[there are] lots of interruptions and slow Internet speed.’’

13. Recommendations Continuous training in using the IR and in ICT, more generally Copyright training (Training on publisher rights eg SHERPA RoMEO) Seek alternative funding sources other than central Govt funding Librarians need continuous training in preservation, metadata, etc. credit: Elco van Staveren, https://www.flickr.com/photos/103454225@N06/14442720405/i n/photostream/Elco van Staveren

14. Further Reading Bossaller, J., & Atiso, K. (2015). Sharing science The state of institutional repositories in Ghana. IFLA journal, 41(1), 25-39. Data Sharing For Global Health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK321557/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK321557/ Fox, M., & Hanlon, S. M. (2015). Barriers to Open Access uptake for researchers in Africa. Online Information Review, 39(5), 698-716. Kelly, J., & Eells, L. (2015). Global scholarship The role of subject repositories in advancing research from the developing world. College & Research Libraries News, 76(5), 265-268. Willinsky, J. (2006). The access principle: The case for open access to research and scholarship. MIT Press. http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/106529.http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/106529